New Year's Evolution, or: "Easy, Writer"
Jan. 3rd, 2008 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldFor a brief period, a few years ago, when people casually asked me what I "did," presumably for a living, I would reply that I was a "writer." I admit that this is at best ambiguous and at worst outright disingenuous, since my actual job title has always been functionally hierarchical and corporate. But when these interrogators inevitably followed up with "what do you write?" I could reasonably reply that I wrote poetry, short stories, essays, criticism, lyrics -- and oh yeah, press releases and newsletters and issue briefs.
Much of this euphemism I can attribute to vanity, since "writer" just sounds sexier than "Assistant Deputy Director of Projects for the National Association for Policy." [Not my real role or my real employer, although I assure you that my true nameplate -- or at least the duty prescribed therein -- is equally soporific.] But I did honestly think of myself a writer who only got paid for the boring stuff.
As I say, that was years ago. I don't call myself a "writer" anymore, because I don't write much anymore. I still string words together as part of my job, but the vocabulary, crypto-legally parsed and phrased and processed, has been bled of whatever limited rhetorical value it had in the first place. By the time I come home from work, goddamned words have been flopping and twirling and causing such a ruckus in my head that I don't want to deal with them anymore. I fear my writing muscles have been misused and bludgeoned into atrophy, like a clarinet that stops working correctly after having been used as a hammer.
Also, aside from mundane career frustrations, I'm pretty happy. Much of the youthful, jagged angst and frustration that fueled my composition has melted into calm, shallow puddles. This is not good for creativity; contentedness does not make for good work. Nobody who ever made anything worth a damn came from or to a happy home. The unspoken formula for success in the arts is to be (a) sexually compromised, (b) abused by authority figures and/or (c) abusive of mind-altering substances. If you are all three you can even be eligible for the Nobel Literature Prize, although no one will want to hang out with you at the after-parties.
Nevertheless, I cling to the notion of myself as a writer. When J. yells at me for not enjoying a vacation because I am in my head, mentally composing an aromatic description of our tour bus, I am forced to accept that a maybe a writer is simply what I am. And if my happiness or my world-weariness make me nothing more than a hack, and I'm writing only for me, then that's okay for now. After spending the bulk of my 20s learning to be myself, it's time for me to believe in myself.
But writers write, and I have to get back to that. Through the looking glass I can see pretty far back, to my freshman year of college, when I was a homesick, lovesick idiot addicted to e-mail, then in its embryonic glory. Every day I sent to my closest friends a "Daily Thought," usually an arcane quotation delivered with some related personal commentary or inside jokes. (I have a collection of these "Daily Thoughts" saved but will not post them, not only because the text includes sensitive and personally identifiable information but also because the actual writing is so hackneyed as to be unbearably humiliating for a self-proclaimed writer.)
I'd like to try that again, choose a quotation or a few each (week)day to see if it inspires a verbal reaction from me. Hopefully, my reactions won't all be as verbal as this one.
I realize this project is unoriginal and derivative, and not even necessarily self-derivative, but hey. This is the Internet after all, and in any case there are probably only three or four of you reading this journal anymore. Let's just see how it goes. Maybe I can make myself a writer. And if I find out that I'm instead simply a thinker or a sheepherder or merely a corporate flunky, then at least I'll know.
"Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on Earth, will escape punishment hereafter."
- Jessamyn West
RESOLVED, on this day, January 3, 2008, I will write. I will write regularly. I will write earnestly. I will writegood well awesome.
This might be harder than I thought.
Much of this euphemism I can attribute to vanity, since "writer" just sounds sexier than "Assistant Deputy Director of Projects for the National Association for Policy." [Not my real role or my real employer, although I assure you that my true nameplate -- or at least the duty prescribed therein -- is equally soporific.] But I did honestly think of myself a writer who only got paid for the boring stuff.
As I say, that was years ago. I don't call myself a "writer" anymore, because I don't write much anymore. I still string words together as part of my job, but the vocabulary, crypto-legally parsed and phrased and processed, has been bled of whatever limited rhetorical value it had in the first place. By the time I come home from work, goddamned words have been flopping and twirling and causing such a ruckus in my head that I don't want to deal with them anymore. I fear my writing muscles have been misused and bludgeoned into atrophy, like a clarinet that stops working correctly after having been used as a hammer.
Also, aside from mundane career frustrations, I'm pretty happy. Much of the youthful, jagged angst and frustration that fueled my composition has melted into calm, shallow puddles. This is not good for creativity; contentedness does not make for good work. Nobody who ever made anything worth a damn came from or to a happy home. The unspoken formula for success in the arts is to be (a) sexually compromised, (b) abused by authority figures and/or (c) abusive of mind-altering substances. If you are all three you can even be eligible for the Nobel Literature Prize, although no one will want to hang out with you at the after-parties.
Nevertheless, I cling to the notion of myself as a writer. When J. yells at me for not enjoying a vacation because I am in my head, mentally composing an aromatic description of our tour bus, I am forced to accept that a maybe a writer is simply what I am. And if my happiness or my world-weariness make me nothing more than a hack, and I'm writing only for me, then that's okay for now. After spending the bulk of my 20s learning to be myself, it's time for me to believe in myself.
But writers write, and I have to get back to that. Through the looking glass I can see pretty far back, to my freshman year of college, when I was a homesick, lovesick idiot addicted to e-mail, then in its embryonic glory. Every day I sent to my closest friends a "Daily Thought," usually an arcane quotation delivered with some related personal commentary or inside jokes. (I have a collection of these "Daily Thoughts" saved but will not post them, not only because the text includes sensitive and personally identifiable information but also because the actual writing is so hackneyed as to be unbearably humiliating for a self-proclaimed writer.)
I'd like to try that again, choose a quotation or a few each (week)day to see if it inspires a verbal reaction from me. Hopefully, my reactions won't all be as verbal as this one.
I realize this project is unoriginal and derivative, and not even necessarily self-derivative, but hey. This is the Internet after all, and in any case there are probably only three or four of you reading this journal anymore. Let's just see how it goes. Maybe I can make myself a writer. And if I find out that I'm instead simply a thinker or a sheepherder or merely a corporate flunky, then at least I'll know.
"Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on Earth, will escape punishment hereafter."
- Jessamyn West
RESOLVED, on this day, January 3, 2008, I will write. I will write regularly. I will write earnestly. I will write
This might be harder than I thought.
